Research Interests

My research on “geography” in literature falls into three interconnecting categories. First, I research places called, for instance, Africa, Jamaica, colony. Second, I research literature that depicts “foreign lands” using ideas such as “the dark continent,” “exile,” “tourist,” or “at home.” Third, I research the “imagined geographies” of Western philosophy especially of metaphysics and in particular Kant’s "Critique of Judgment" to analyze tropes of travel, geography, and conquest. My research shows how these tropes work to create and sustain ideas that support (and in some ways disrupt) Eurocentric and imperial perceptions of the world. Most importantly, I study how Africana writers use these same tropes to reconfigure “inherited conceptions” of space and the hierarchies embedded in those conceptions.